SAFETY

SAFETY; Deaths Mounting Again In War on Drunk Driving

By MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: October 23, 2002

WASHINGTON—
FOR 15 years, the United States was winning the war against drunken driving, steadily reducing the percentage of deaths from accidents involving alcohol.

But at some point in the mid-1990's, the progress stopped and then reversed. Now, the struggle is a war of attrition, with drunken driving claiming about 17,000 deaths a year and inflicting tens of thousands of disabling injuries. Experts offer many explanations as to why the war bogged down, but they are mostly variations on a theme.

''People think the problem has been solved,'' said Wendy J. Hamilton, president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

The increase in the number of young drivers has very likely played a role, experts say, and attention has been diverted to other issues, like road rage, cellphone use and defective tires.

Whatever the cause, the reversal has been striking. In 1982, when drunken driving became a national issue (President Ronald Reagan convened a task force against it and Congress established a National Drunk and Drugged Driving Awareness Week), the fraction of fatal crashes in which someone had a blood alcohol level of at least .08 was 53 percent, translating into 23,246 deaths.

By 1997, that figure had fallen to 34 percent, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, with 14,421 fatalities, a reduction of about a third carried out over a period of huge growth in vehicles, drivers and miles traveled.

But since then, the figures have crept back up last year, to 35 percent and 14,953 deaths, based on .08 alcohol concentration level, which Congress recently set as the national standard for drunken driving and encouraged states to incorporate into their laws. (Two-thirds of the states are now at .08.)

The statistics are more important as a yardstick of progress than as a precise measure of deaths. There is no actual count of fatalities caused by a drunken driver; rather, the count reflects the number of fatal accidents in which the driver, a pedestrian or someone else involved had a blood alcohol level of .08 or above.

Making further progress would require a stronger sense of urgency, but it would also need a strategy as to what kind of problem driver to pursue: the large group of people who occasionally drink a bit too much, or the smaller but far more dangerous group of drivers who drive when very drunk?

To illustrate what this means, Annette Sandberg, the deputy administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and a former superintendent of the state police in Washington State, pulled out a bar chart showing the blood alcohol concentration of the most inebriated driver in each fatal crash. More than half the fatalities involved people who were at twice the legal limit or above. The median was .16.

Ms. Sandberg thinks that there are fewer deaths involving even drunker drivers because it is difficult to operate a car above that level, although the chart topped out with nine drivers who had astounding blood measures of .43.

It's easier to drive a car at levels around .08 and .10, which was the common legal standard until now. But experts think that fewer cars are crashed with drivers at that level because many people who might in the past have drunk themselves to .08 or .10 have stopped drinking and driving.

In an interview, Ms. Sandberg said: ''.08 scared a lot of people. It's a lot easier to get to .08, and you need to be more cautious.'' Lowering the standard and enforcing it, she added, may have impressed casual drinkers but not people who can reach .16.

''A lot of states need to have stricter rules with regard to their problem drinkers,'' she said.

In fact, some states are running short of tactics against casual or heavy drinkers. California, which adopted many laws to fight drunken driving early on, has felt the effect of most of them by now, said Cliff Helander, chief of research at the state's Department of Motor Vehicles. Progress has stopped, he said, because ''there's been a stoppage of major legislation.''

California's last major law was almost 10 years ago, he said, allowing the police and the courts to seize the cars of drunken drivers and hold them for 30 days. It also uses tactics that other states use, like automatic license revocation if a Breathalyzer test shows illegal blood alcohol concentration. He said the next big step might be to raise the tax on alcoholic beverages.

Representative Nita M. Lowey, a New York Democrat who was instrumental in the federal .08 legislation, introduced a bill this year that would set national minimum standards for sentencing repeat offenders.

Repeat offenders and those convicted with especially high-blood-alcohol concentrations would face vehicle impoundment, alcohol ignition interlocks (which work like a Breathalyzer built into the car), treatment and imprisonment. People stopped by the police who refused to take a Breathalyzer test would face penalties tougher than those for drunken driving.

The bill did not even get a hearing. Ms. Lowey, in a telephone interview, was philosophical. ''We're not doing much of anything in this Congress,'' she said. Next year, when the major transportation appropriations bill comes up, she added, she would try to append her proposal to it, and MADD would be knocking on legislators' doors.